‘Do you expect me to talk?’: Dick Van Dyke says he turned down playing James Bond

For more than six decades, the actor Dick Van Dyke has been pilloried for his attempts at a British accent in Mary Poppins (1964). Now, the actor who has since apologised for the “most atrocious cockney accent in the history of cinema” as chimney sweep Bert in the Disney classic has revealed he was in the running to play another UK icon on screen: James Bond.

Speaking on the Today TV programme in the US , Van Dyke, who turns 100 next month, said that Bond producer Albert Broccoli approached him to ask if he fancied the role of the British spy in his first big screen outing.

“Would you like to be Bond?” Van Dyke recalls Broccoli saying, to which he replied: “Have you heard my British accent?” As this conversation would have taken place in the early 60s, before Sean Connery was cast in